Weapons in the Schools

Abstract

This article discusses the carrying and using of weapons, primarily firearms, in public schools in the United States. Violent crime in the United States peaked in the early 1990s and declined into the twenty-first century. Between 1993 and 2017, the percentage of high school students (grades nine to twelve) who reported carrying a weapon on school property at least once in the previous thirty days fell from 12 to 4 percent (Musu et al., 2019). During the 2017–18 school year, seven public school students per one hundred thousand brought firearms to or possessed firearms at school (Wang et al., 2020). In 2022, there were 62 incidences of students under the age of eleven bringing firearms to school and 706 incidents involving students aged twelve through seventeen. Although these situations rise and fall with frequency, gun violence in schools remains of great concern, and the debate continues as to how best to prevent violence in schools, particularly mass shootings (Chiu, 2023). The deadliest gun-related tragedies in American schools are the Virginia Tech shooting in Blacksburg, Virginia (2007), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut (2012), and the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida (2018). Although firearm homicides have decreased from their peak in 1993, mass shootings that occur in public places such as schools (rather than in private homes) have become more common since the 1980s. By May, the United States experienced 262 mass shootings in 2023, far exceeding the number of days of the year (CBS News, 2023). According to the Violence Policy Center, the rise in public mass shootings has coincided with an increase in the sale of semiautomatic weapons with high-capacity ammunition magazines (Violence Policy Center, "Mass shootings").

Overview

History. The right to "keep and bear arms," as outlined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, is deeply ingrained in the fabric of the United States. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president, prided himself on his ability to use his prized Turkish pistols to shoot a squirrel dead at thirty yards (cited in Halbrook, 2000). Hunting and shooting have been popular recreational pastimes since the founding of the United States, and they remain popular in many parts of the country. The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded by former Union Army soldiers in 1871. However, in the late twentieth century, as the public was confronted with increasing rates of violent crime, Americans turned to weapons not for hunting but as a means of protecting themselves and their families.

Unfortunately, despite a majority of law-abiding citizens who use guns legally and properly, guns fall into the hands of criminals. The problem of gun violence intensified in the 1920s during Prohibition, and citizens began to wonder if one way to address the problem of violent crime was a supply-side approach that reduced the number of guns and other weapons available for purchase. The first federal gun control measure was passed in 1927, and it banned the sale of mail-order handguns in an attempt to take them out of the hands of the criminal gangs that operated to supply alcohol in major cities. The passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt combined to impose new taxes on purchases of guns, require FBI background checks of gun buyers, and prohibit gun sales to known criminals.

Gun laws were tightened after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and Gun Control Act of 1968, which raised the legal age to purchase a gun to twenty-one, banned the interstate sale of handguns, prohibited the direct mail order purchase of guns, and required that gun purchases be made from federally licensed dealers. The Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 went further and effectively banned the manufacture of machine guns and other fully automatic weapons for civilian use. Since the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, handgun buyers have had to undergo a computerized FBI background check before being allowed to purchase that weapon. However, buyers who purchase guns at trade shows are exempted from the background check requirement. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, a provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, closed the loophole allowing civilian sales of semiautomatic weapons, but the provision was allowed to expire in 2004. In the 2020s, private civilians can also own fully automatic weapons, although the legal process to squire them is expensive and lengthy.

Gun-Related Violence. Against this backdrop of government firearms regulation throughout the twentieth century, Americans became increasingly concerned with gun-related violence. The statistics are indeed sobering:

"Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than 1.3 million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries" (Violence Policy Center, n.d.). In 2019, firearms were involved in the deaths of more than 39,700 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021. In 2021, according to the Pew Research Center, 48,830 Americans died from firearm-related injuries (Gramlich, 2023).

For many young people, gun violence is a fact of life—a deadly one that students, parents, faculty, and lawmakers have dealt with for decades and continued to confront in the 2020s. According to Cooper and Smith (2011), guns were responsible for homicides of teens and young adults aged eighteen to thirty-four more so than homicides of persons of other ages. Up to age seventeen, the percentage of homicide victims killed with a gun increased and declined thereafter (Cooper & Smith, 2011).

Statistics, taken together with gun control laws in the United States, provide important context for any discussion of weapons in public schools. The data seem to indicate that students—or their relatives or friends—are able to take possession of weapons that are illegal for young people to possess, let alone use. The resulting gun violence at the beginning of the twenty-first century is taking place despite the existence and enforcement of gun control laws.

School Violence. According to researchers at the National Center for Education Statistics (Wang et al., 2020), there were 42 school-associated violent deaths from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017. In 2018, students aged twelve to eighteen were victims of about 836,100 nonfatal crimes at school, including thefts, simple assaults, and serious violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. That year, their rates of at-school nonfatal victimization were 33 per 1,000 students (Wang et al., 2020), compared to 16 victimizations per 1,000 students away from school. The total victimization rate (thefts plus violent crimes) decreased between 1992 and 2018. During the 2017–18 school year, 80 percent of all public schools reported one or more incidents of violence, for a total of 1.4 million incidents (Wang et al., 2020).

High school students were far more likely to experience all types of crime at school than either middle or primary school students. In 2013–14, 78 percent of high schools and combined elementary/secondary schools (high/combined schools) reported violent incidents, compared to 53 percent of primary schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). About 6 percent of high school students (grades 9 to 12) were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property in 2017, a figure that had declined from 9 percent in 2001 (Musu et al., 2019).

The first significant violent incident involving weapons in schools took place in 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan, when Andrew Kehoe, a disgruntled school board member, took out his frustration on the Bath Consolidated School, home to children in grades two through six. In a grisly premeditated attack, Kehoe detonated hundreds of pounds of dynamite, and the World War I cast off pyrotol that was stashed inside the school, killing 45 people and injuring 58 others. Before Kehoe could be arrested and brought to justice, he blew himself up, killing and injuring several others trying to help in the aftermath of the school bombing.

While Kehoe's actions were disturbing, they were considered an isolated action by a deranged individual. What did get the public's attention was the use of weapons—especially guns—by the students themselves. Such a shooting took place at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. Slightly different, yet still disturbing, at Kent State in Ohio (1970) and Jackson State in Mississippi, authorities opened fire on protesting students, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries. This was during the turbulent Vietnam War era, and these massacres took place around the same time that three leading Americans were shot to death—President John F. Kennedy (1963), Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy (1968), and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968). These assassinations raised public consciousness about gun violence, helping to ensure the passage of tighter federal gun control legislation in 1968.

Guns in Schools. In the 1980s and 1990s, the rate of gun violence increased in middle and high schools. School shootings garnered front-page headlines across the United States and drew renewed attention to the problem of weapons in schools. They took place despite the passage of new federal legislation in the 1990s designed to establish schools as gun-free zones by making it illegal to have a gun within one thousand feet of a school. These school shootings often involved banned weapons, such as the .22-caliber Remington Viper (Richland School massacre, November 1995) and high-powered rifles (Moses Lake massacre, February 1996), as well as Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotguns, Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9 mm semiautomatic rifles, Intratec Tec-9 semiautomatic weapons, and 12-gauge shotguns (Columbine massacre, 1999).

A survey of data from the early 1990s collected by Page and Hammermeister (1997) showed the growing prevalence of guns and gun violence in American public schools:

• According to the 1990 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 1 in 20 senior high school students carried a firearm, usually a handgun, and 1 in 5 carried a weapon of some type during the 30 days preceding the survey (Centers for Disease Control, 1991).
• A survey of 10 inner-city high schools in four states found that 35 percent of male and 11 percent of female students reported carrying a gun (Sheley, McGee, & Wright, 1992).
• A study of rural school students in southeast Texas found that 6 percent of male students had taken guns to school, and almost 2 percent reported that they did so almost every day. In addition, 42.3 percent of those surveyed said they could get a gun if they wanted one (Kissell, 1993).
• More than one-third (34 percent) of urban high school students in Seattle reported having easy access to handguns, while 11.4 percent of males and 1.5 percent of females reported owning a handgun. One-third of those who owned handguns reported that they had fired at someone. Further, almost 10 percent of female students reported a firearm homicide or suicide among family members or close friends (Callahan & Rivara, 1992).
• Another study from the southeastern United States found that 9 percent of urban and suburban youth owned a handgun (Larson, 1994).
• A poll of students in grades six through twelve conducted by Louis Harris for the Harvard School of Public Health in 1993 found that 59 percent said they could get a handgun if they wanted one, and 21 percent said they could get one within the hour.
• More than 60 percent of urban youth reported that they could get a handgun, and 58 percent of suburban youth also claimed that they could (Larson, 1994).
• Fifteen percent of students reported carrying a handgun in the past month, 11 percent said that they had been shot at, 9 percent said that they had fired a gun at someone, and 4 percent said they had carried a gun to school in the past year (Drevitch, 1994; Hull, 1993).
• In a study of two public inner-city junior high schools in Washington, DC, 47 percent of males reported having ever carried knives, and 25 percent reported having ever carried guns for protection or to use in case they got into a fight; 37 percent of females reported having carried a knife for these purposes. Both schools are located in high-crime areas (Webster, Gainer, & Champion, 1993).

Students in the 1990s, who were the primary targets of their weapons-wielding peers, understood as clearly as any that something was lacking when it came to the safety of their schools. Even Eric Harris, the coconspirator in the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, discussed the ease with which weapons could be brought into schools in a 1997 school paper. In the report, Harris detailed several ways students could sneak guns into schools—such as using backpacks or going through entrances with no metal detectors—and recommended that schools use metal detectors at all school entrances.

While Harris and his coconspirator Dylan Klebold reveled in their ability to deceive their parents and teachers about the plans they were hatching for the Columbine massacre—including the use of insincere school reports—Harris's paper became a self-fulfilling prophecy. School shootings such as that at Columbine led politicians, parents, and school officials to reassess school security measures, and two of the most visible signs of increased security in many public middle and high schools have been precisely the two things Harris actually recommended: security officials and metal detectors.

Security Measures. As the statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate, public schools increasingly implemented school safety measures designed to prevent the incidence of crime in school:

Have these increased safety measures been working? It would largely appear that way, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (Wang et al., 2020; NCES, 2016):

Between 1993 and 2017, the percentage of students in grades nine through twelve who reported carrying a weapon anywhere within the preceding month generally declined from 22 to 16 percent. Similarly, the percentage of students in grades nine through twelve who carried a weapon at school also declined during this period—from 12 to 4 percent.

In the 2013–14 school year, approximately 78 percent of serious disciplinary actions (e.g., suspensions, expulsions, or transfers) were taken due to violent incidents at school, and 5.1 percent were taken due to weapons possession. In the 2017–18 school year, 1.7 percent of public schools took a serious disciplinary action in response to the use or possession of a firearm or explosive device, while 11.1 percent took a serious disciplinary action in response to the use or possession of a weapon other than a firearm or explosive device (Wang et al., 2020). Still, school shootings often dominate the news media in the 2020s. Twenty-one people died at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, suggesting another look into gun laws was necessary (Mendez, 2023).

Following the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, state legislatures rushed to address gaps in school safety and preparedness measures. Among the proposed solutions were developing or updating emergency plans and drills, increasing or introducing police presence in schools, funding or implementing security infrastructure and/or equipment such as metal detectors, and using mental health services to address at-risk students' behavioral issues (Shah & Ujifusa, 2013). A number of initiatives were also directly related to guns—arming teachers or other school staff, loosening restrictions on the possession of guns near schools, or increasing regulation of certain types of firearms or quantities of ammunition (Shah & Ujifusa, 2013). While schools need to continue to be vigilant about safety, particularly in light of threats from global terrorist networks and outsider shootings such as the Sandy Hook massacre, it is important to keep the use of weapons at schools and the amount of gun-related violence in perspective:

"The best data on the very specific threat of school-associated violent death reveals that children face a very slim chance of being killed at school. Fewer than 2 percent of youth homicides occur at school, and the number of at-school homicides largely declined between 1992 and 2010 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014).

Further Insights

Combating School Violence. To some degree, violence has long been a factor in public education in the United States and around the world. Eliminating it completely from any public school will always be the goal, however, and school counselors and others have studied and applied various methods for conflict resolution. Beyond the obvious benefit of reducing physical harm to students, conflict resolution methods have other benefits, such as creating a school environment that is more conducive to learning. The literature is clear that violence and aggression are in conflict, as it were, with the primary purpose of public schools: "Aggressive student interactions often permeate a school's culture and create a hostile learning environment that stifles the academic productivity and success of students" (Cantrell, Parks-Savage & Rehfuss, 2007, p. 475).

Research on why students carry weapons can reveal the most effective forms of intervention. Page and Hammermeister (1997) again summarize many of the theories presented:

"A common reason given by young people for carrying weapons is for protection against being "jumped" (Price, Desmond, & Smith, 1991). However, research has shown that weapon-carrying among youth appears to be more closely associated with criminal activity, delinquency, and aggressiveness than to purely defensive behavior (Sheley, McGee, & Wright, 1992; Webster, Gainer, & Champion, 1993). Handgun ownership by inner-city high school youth has been associated with gang membership, selling drugs, interpersonal violence, being convicted of crimes, and either suspension or expulsion from school (Callahan & Rivara, 1992). Gun-carrying among junior high students is also strongly linked with indicators of serious delinquency, such as having been arrested (Webster, Gainer, & Champion, 1993). These studies have the following implications for the prevention of gun-carrying among youth (Webster, Gainer, & Champion, 1993)"

"If gun carrying stems largely from antisocial attitudes and behaviors rather than from purely defensive motives of otherwise nonviolent youths, interventions designed to prevent delinquency may be more effective than those that focus only on educating youths about the risks associated with carrying a gun. The latter may, however, be able to deter less hardened youths from carrying weapons in the future. Intensive and comprehensive interventions directed at high-risk children could possibly 'inoculate' children against the many social factors that foster criminal deviance and the most violent behavior patterns" (Page & Hammermeister, 1997, para. 6/7).

Different school districts have chosen different ways to deal with the problem of weapons in schools, but most rely on a combination of increased security (which may include metal detectors, security cameras, locker searches, and on-site police officers or security guards) and intervention programs. Many school districts have increased security only reluctantly, fearing that it will convey the wrong message to students and faculty and create a downward spiral of mistrust leading to violence. According to reported data, the percentage of public schools using security cameras had increased from 19 percent in 1999–2000 to 83 percent in 2017–18, and the percentage that had at least one security staff present at the school at least once per week had risen to 61 percent in 2017–18 from 42 percent in 2005–06 (Wang et al., 2020).

Viewpoints

Is Gun Control the Answer? The spike in school violence in the 1990s and the large number of high-profile mass shootings at schools in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century brought out deep-seated philosophical differences among the American public regarding the proper role of guns in society. Some argued that the rise in school violence was symptomatic of an irrational American love affair with weapons of all kinds. Others argued that guns were taking the blame when other social pathologies were a much more likely cause—they summed up their reasoning in the slogan, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

Opponents of gun control often cite historical examples, as did Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 1982:

"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying—that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870–1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920–1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965–1976—establishes the repeated, complete, and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime" (Hatch, 1982).

In response to the Sandy Hook shooting, several gun-control measures were introduced to Congress, but all failed to pass. Meanwhile, efforts to pass a federal bill to expand the requirement for background checks came to a stalemate and met with failure in the Senate (James, 2013). Thus, the debate over gun control continued. According to the magazine State Legislatures, which used data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, by July 2015, eight states had passed legislation allowing faculty and students with permits to carry concealed weapons on public college campuses, while nineteen states had legally banned concealed-carry on campuses; the individual colleges and universities get to make the decision in twenty-three other states. Those that support the presence of concealed weapons at colleges insist that the weapons could be used to help save lives in an emergency; critics, on the other hand, argue that allowing students or teachers to carry guns on campuses only increases the chance of injury (Hultin, 2015). By 2023, thirty-two states allowed faculty and administrators to carry firearms on campus with the goal of protecting students (USCCA, 2023).

In late 2015, a twenty-six-year-old student at Umpqua Community College in Oregon entered one of the classroom buildings and opened fire on students, eventually killing ten and wounding several others. It was reported that the gunman or members of his family had legally purchased several firearms, some of which he brought to the scene and others of which were found in his apartment. When President Barack Obama addressed the nation after the news of the campus shooting broke, he appeared visibly frustrated and emphasized once more that common sense gun legislation needed to be passed in an effort to restrict such gun violence. By 2016, President Obama was appealing to the American public to gain support to bypass Congress and issue an executive order to tighten background checks through a requirement that anyone selling guns must register as a licensed dealer and conduct background checks.

After a gunman shot and killed seventeen victims at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students who survived the shooting launched a nationwide gun control campaign, including the March for Our Lives. The state of Florida passed new gun laws within a month of the shooting. Gun control legislation needs to be proactive, however, and not reactive.

Gun control legislation became a prominent political issue at the federal level once more following the election of Democrat Joe Biden as president in 2020. Shortly after his inauguration in 2021, his administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress advocated for banning assault weapons and once again introduced bills aimed at making background checks stronger (Karni & Edmondson, 2021). When a six-year-old kindergartener in Virginia shot his teacher in January 2023, it became clear more work was needed to stop gun violence in schools.

Conclusion

In sum, opponents of gun control argue that violent crime has much more to do with mental illness, the breakdown of communities, and gun-free zones at schools, among other social factors.

Supporters of gun control cite examples from Europe and other developed nations that have tight gun control laws and far lower rates of violent crime than the United States as evidence that gun control works to lower rates of gun-related violent crime.

Terms & Concepts

Columbine High School Massacre: An attack in April 1999 in which two high school students used a series of guns to wound 24 students, kill 12 students and one teacher, and then kill themselves.

Gun-Free School Zones Act: A federal law passed in 1994 in the United States that made it a crime to have a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.

Gun Control: The attempt to limit the supply of guns in society by making all or certain types of them illegal to obtain or use.

Heath High School Massacre: An attack in December 1997 by teenager Michael Carneal in which he shot and killed three girls and wounded five others. Carneal was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes.

Metal Detectors: Machines used in government buildings, airports, schools, banks, and elsewhere to detect the presence of metal objects that may pose a risk to others.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Massacre: an attack on February 14, 2018, in which a gunman fatally shot fourteen high school students and three school administrators in Parkland, Florida.

Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre: An attack in December 2012 in which a gunman fatally shot twenty first-grade students and six staff members before killing himself.

School Security: An umbrella term used to encompass all the tangible and intangible means by which school officials attempt to keep students and staff safe from emotional or physical harm.

Second Amendment: An amendment to the US Constitution, variously interpreted by courts and politicians, that stresses the need to protect the rights of Americans to "keep and bear arms."

Virginia Tech Massacre: An attack in April 2007 in which thirty-three people, including the gunman, were shot and killed.

Weapons: Objects including but not limited to knives and guns, which can be used to inflict bodily harm on oneself or others.

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Wang, K., Chen, Y., Zhang, J., & Oudekerk, B. (2020). Indicators of school crime and safety: 2019. National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education, and Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020063.pdf

Zhang, A., Musu-Gillette, L., & Oudekerk, B. A. (2016, May). Indicators of school crime and safety: 2015. Retrieved December 29, 2016 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016079.pdf

Suggested Reading

Combating fear and restoring safety in schools. (1998, April). Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Retrieved July 21, 2007, from http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/jjbulletin/9804/weapons.html.

Cullen, D. (2004). The depressive and the psychopath: The FBI's analysis of the killers' motives. Slate. Retrieved July 20, 2007, from http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/.

Finley, L. L. (2014). School violence: A reference handbook. (2nd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Fox, J. A. (2007, April 17). Why they kill. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 20, 2007, from http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/ opinion/la-oe-fox17apr17,1,7688699.story?coll=la-newscomment& ctrack=1&cset=true

Hankin, A., Hertz, M., & Simon, T. (2011). Impacts of metal detector use in schools: Insights from 15 years of research. Journal of School Health, 81, 100–106. Retrieved December 16, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database CINAHL Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=104981194&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Hong, J., & Eamon, M. (2012). Students' perceptions of unsafe schools: an ecological systems analysis. Journal of Child & Family Studies, 21, 428–438. Retrieved December 16, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=74980604&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Lee, J. H. (2013). School shootings in the U.S. public schools: analysis through the eyes of an educator. Retrieved October 3, 2014 from EBSCO Online Database Education Resource Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=94256141

Torres, J. A. (2017). The people behind school shootings and public massacres. New York: Enslow Publishing.

Violent crimes at school declined by one-third (2001). Education USA, 43(23), 1. Retrieved July 18, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=6871031&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Vossekuil, B., Fein, R., Reddy, M., Borum, R., & Modzeleski, W. [PDF document]. (2002). The final report and findings of the safe school initiative: Implications for the prevention of school attacks in the United States. US Treasury Department. Retrieved July 21, 2007, from http://www.treas.gov/usss/ntac/ ssi%5Ffinal%5Freport.pdf.